The session will present for discussions some preliminary outputs from
the FP7 Data without Boundaries project about standards and
harmonization issues for discovery, metadata, accreditation and access
to official microdata within the European context. M. Wittenberg,
M.Priddy, J.Sherpherdson ("Desired portal functionality for effective
resource discovery on OS data across Europe") present the work
undertaken about desired portal functionality for effective resource
discovery: researchers expectations, constraints due to diversity in
content and technical level of the various resources, metadata issues
and identify the next steps for a possible architecture for the portal.
C.Jayet, R.Fleureux, A. Mack, Ch. Wolf "(Servicing researchers in the
use of European OS microdata") set forth the tools employed to cope with
the difficulties encountered in using the existing metadata standards
(DDI2 and 3) in the specific European case when documenting study
programmes, studies and datasets from numerous institutions and
countries and the metadata scheme proposed for documenting European
official microdata both at national and European level with the aim of
building a Service Centre for OS microdata in Europe. R. Silberman, P.
Tubaro, M. Cros, B. Kleiner ("Access to official microdata and
researcher accreditation: State of the art and future perspectives in
Europe") map similarities and differences in national access and
accreditation arrangements while pointing at commonalities for
inter-operability and, ideally, adoption of common standards. D.
Schiller ("A pilot for an European Remote Access Network - first results
and upcoming challenges") presents preliminary outputs about the
concept and architecture of a European distributed remote access for
confidential official microdata coping with current legal constraints
within Europe, security and standard issues, technical feasibility and
researchers needs.

Panel: Towards an Integrated Model for Access to Official Microdata in Europe: First Findings from the FP7 DwB Project

IASSIST Quarterly

Special issue: A pioneer data librarianWelcome
to the special volume of the IASSIST Quarterly (IQ (37):1-4, 2013).
This special issue started as exchange of ideas between Libbie
Stephenson and Margaret Adams to collect